To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow

Isn’t that a beautiful quote; “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”? I read it just recently and thought it was so true, and so prettily put!

Spring is here in full swing, and with spring comes a desire to get out in the garden, pop seeds in the ground and get your hands dirty. I would say that prior to this year I have had a mild and lukewarm interest in the whole concept of gardening. I’ve gone through little spurts now and then, when I’ve wanted to plant some flowers or herbs or something. But I don’t quite know what happened to me this year, it’s like something in me just snapped and I embarked on this slight obsession of gardening! When trying to figure out why I put it down to two things; firstly beacuase life has been very strenuous on me mentally lately and for quite a while. And doing something physical and practical like dig up earth for a vegetable patch has been so soothing and felt like something I can finally control. Secondly, and a more fun reason, is that I have completely fallen in love with the concept of the WW2 Women’s Land Army, or the “Land Girls” as they were also known. And in a secret wish to be one I took to the garden with a spade in my hand! You will probably here me mention the Land Girls on here quite a bit more in the future!

What could be more springy, choosing seeds and planning your garden with a big bunch of tulips infront of you!

So I’ve started out probably way to ambitiously, wanting to do everything I can think of at the same time pretty much. I think of ideas, want to do them and search around until I find a spot where I can make something of it. My family’s little farm, where I am currently living, does already have a big garden, with heaps of friut trees, some already excisting vegetable patches and a few flower beds where I have previously planted mainly roses. But with a big garden comes never ending opportunities to keep updating, developing and trying new ideas out! That means I have not only been keeping busy trying to do maintanance on already existing things but I’ve also expanded beyond that. My hope and plan is to be able to fill up the place with lots more flowers, because who doesn’t like a garden full of flowers right?! And then I also decided to go ahead and extend the vegetable garden, first and foremost by building a raised vegetable bed.

My parents had started the project up a few years ago by covering the ground where the plan was to eventually make something, and when I came across this blog post here on how to build your own raised vegetable bed, easily and cheaply I thought I might as well give it a go. I mean how hard could it be?!

Building mode! Of course with a cup of tea as accompaniment 😉

I am no carpenter, but I managed to build these almost completely on my own, from material we had lying around. I didn’t need to purchase anything for it, so it really was cheap! And I really think they turned out very well! I didn’t follow the instructions in the post I mentioned earlier completely, but they were good guidelines and I just adapted to be able to use whatever we had at home.

I’m really quite pleased with how these turned out. I am hoping to eventually be able to paint them as well, preferably in a nice green…

The amount of weeding that had to be done with the new soil though…. Filled the wheelbarrow!

This is what the raised garden looks like. Still needs more soil in the left one. The plan is to have vegetables in the right one, and eventually fill the whole of the left one up with strawberries…. *dreams* The middle stip is covered for a possible third one at some other point.

That has definitely been the biggest one of my garden projects so far, taking several days to complete. In fact it isn’t complete yet as half of them still need to be filled up with soil.

The old vegetable patch has also been dug up and prepared. The blisters on my hands were numerous and paintful, but the result will be lovely, once all those peas, beans and potatoes start growing there…

After I finally finished digging it all up by hand.

Beautiful, sunny day in the garden can’t help but put a smile on your face!

Now here is something else I’ve been playing around with. As people who know me will be aware of I am quite a hands on person, who really likes crafty things. And I always like to try to make things myself, even if I don’t have the right materials around or know what I’m doing. So I wanted to make these structures, for binding up my peas and flowers on. I confess I mainly got my inspiration for this from Hobbiton, with a bit of English cottage garden style thrown in for good measure.

Anyway, I went in to the forest, and cut down a big pile of sticks, and voila! An hour later I had these!

Aren’t they pretty?! They will look so good with peas climbing all over them!

I know you traditionally use willow, but I just grabbed whatever branches I thought would work and used those. Turned out fine 🙂

Andrew helping me collect up some of my twigs, just after he returned from a horse ride.

Since weaving with sticks was so much fun I wanted to do something more, so I decided to make a fence. Because why not right? So I made one around the new flower bed I had just dug up. This used to be a flower bed, once upon a time many years ago. With a sun dial in the middle. But for the last 10 years at least it has been nothing but an overgrown pile of weeds. But now it will be restored to it’s former glory, and then some!

Ta-da! Cute eh?!

I mean what’s not to love about adorable little minature fences!

So yeah, as you can see this is something that has been keeping me busy on many a fine spring day this year. To be honest though, even not so fine spring days when the snow was still lying around I was also out working, just because I was so eager to keep going!

I have many more things to plant, but I have made a start and the windows in the dining room are starting to slowly fill up with little green sprouts of various sorts. I check them eagerly and with anticipation every morning, to see if anything new has appeard overnight! I know I am exaggeratedly excited about this, and I’m sure it won’t remain that way for too long, but for now I’m enjoying it a lot. 🙂

Welcome my little sprouts!

“A Garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; and above all it teaches entire trust. “

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